Temperance — Living It Out — KJV Bible Study

Temperance is a walk before it is anything else. A child does not rule himself in a day: first he crawls, and is carried, and is fed with milk; then he is weaned, and quieted, like a child weaned from his mother; then he walks, and learns to refuse the evil and choose the good; then he runs — and everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. The Greek word is egkrateia (G1466, temperance) — strength within, a person's rule over his own self; and it has a companion, egkrateuomai (G1467, to be temperate), which is that same strength put to work in the race. The Hebrew sets it in one word, mashal (H4910, to rule) — the one who rules his spirit is better than the one who takes a city; and where that rule is missing, matsar (H4623, rule), the person is a city broken down, without walls. This study carries temperance through a person's whole journey: how he finds it when he can only crawl; how he walks in it day by day once he has it; how he runs with it and offers himself up like a soldier; and how he crosses the line at the end, where the crown never decays, and where the world passes away, and its cravings with it, but the one who does the will of God lasts forever. Search it out.